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I am, as you may have gathered by now, spending some time in, my favourite hot and bankrupt country, Greece. The infamous short seller Evil Knievil, and I, are both the sons of classical scholars and Evil seems to have got it into his head that I am spending my time here checking out either archaeological sites or hot, bikini clad. young Swedish ladies. He is only half right. Not that I have looked hard, but as far as I can see the only Scandinavian women here are at least twice my age. As such the choice is ancient ruins or just very old ones. Having checked out the ancient ones (the crumbling stones), I am now left with nothing to do but attempt to lose some weight (something Evil has never tried) and to write.
Greeks, as the Germans never tire of pointing out, have not historically been very keen on paying tax. They have regarded it in the same way Evil regards going to the gym: something you can do but which is best left to other people. Thus income goes undeclared, there is a real concept of black and white money (keeping two sets of books) and generally if you can get away with it, people do so.
Taking a historic perspective I cannot condone this but have some sympathy. Greece has operated until recently with a two party system. Pasok and New Democracy have taken it in turns to rule and when in power they dispense patronage to their followers and stick their fat fingers in the till. Have you noticed that most Greek politicians are extremely fat? It is just an aside. A principle that comes from the American war of independence, which I agree with wholeheartedly, is “no taxation without representation” and since Greeks have had a choice of two parties with minimal ideological differences whose sole purpose was to decide who got to steal taxpayer’s cash; one could argue that the average Greek punter was not properly represented. As such why should he or she hand over his earned cash just for it to be stolen?
However not all the cash was stolen. Some of it went on establishing a fat state bureaucracy and payroll; on persecuting half-witted British plane spotters and in clearing up (some of) the vomit and other detritus left by the young people of Europe as they partied in those resorts that the Daily Mail so loves to expose. As such Greeks should have paid tax.
But now the rules have changed. Greece is, as even my cat has noticed, bankrupt. If its leaders had half a brain cell they would default on their debts and with a devalued drachma regain competitiveness in the few real industries Greece has (tourism, olive growing, Metaxa and ouzo production and er… tourism) and, as Iceland has done, start to rebuild. But sadly Greece’s leader’s associate Euro membership with national pride and with all those grants they used to receive (and promptly steal). And so they have accepted the humiliation of taking on yet more debt ( because that is what Greece really needs, er…not) in return for agreeing to an austerity programme which will clearly send unemployment up from 23% today to 30%, 40% or whatever. That in turn will reduce Greece’s ability to service, let alone repay its debts but that is a crisis for another day.
The point is that the Greek electorate now have no say in how their country is managed. The corrupt politicians might be allowed to tamper with laws on plane spotting or nudity on the beach but on anything that matters it is Brussels (or rather Berlin) that calls the shots. It does not matter what the clowns in the Greek Parliament say, it is the Eurocrats that must approve the budget of this poor country. I am surprised that after Greece’s last experience of direct rule from Berlin sixty years ago that once proud Hellas has signed up for another dose of German “discipline” but she has.
However as a Greek taxpayer I would now be correct in saying that I have no representation in any meaningful sense of the word and on that basis why should I do, what the American colonists fought to avoid, and that is pay tax to a state controlled from abroad? Give Evil Knievil a moral basis for avoiding going to the gym and the chances of him doing so go from sod all to absolute zero. I sense that many Greeks will now take the same view of paying tax. Since I regard Greece’s decision not to default and to agree to German imposed austerity as both a national humiliation and also profoundly damaging for this country and society, I would take that view too.
PS. My spell check says that Eurocrats is not a proper word and that instead I should use Autocrats or Euro rats. I can see where it is coming from.
